Google Reader going off from July 1, alternatives up

Google Reader is all set to goes off from the world of feeds. Google has recently made the announcement on account of their popular spring cleaning drive that the service is going to be retired from July 1st.

Google Reader shutting down from July 1st

Google Reader is one of the oldest feed reader, the concern has launched the service back in the year 2005. The service was designed to ease the users in discovering and keeping their favourite websites under a single roof. However, the reader service is renowned among its users, in the sight of Google, the Reader usage has been ‘declined’ over the years.

As a temporary solution, Google stated that users and developers interested in alternatives to Reader, can export their data including subscriptions with the Google Takeout service over the next four months. To save the reader service, Lawyer Dan Lewis has also started a campaign on petition website Change.org, interestingly, the petition even garnered by more than 31,000 supporters in about 12 hours.

Of course a question might arise in the users mind that why Google is taking such step, on the other side, Alan Green, Software Engineer at Google has pointed out two major reasons. Firstly, the concern does not want to pour the efforts on a service if its usage declined from past years. And the other reason pointed out by Alan, is to focus on making the future experience better, Google has taken such step.

Google Reader is shutting down and as usual, alternatives are up with more concern on taking a large number of users shifted from Google’s renowned service. As a support, one of the renowned alternate service, Feedly has also provided a guide to transfer the contents from Google Reader account to their database.

There are few alternatives to the Google Reader app for Android as well. Some renowned apps including Pulse, Flipboard, Feedly, RSSDemon and Google’s own Google Currents are a few titles which are available for free on the Play Store.

Besides Google Reader, the search giant has also sketched the plans to shut off eight major services. These services include Apps Script’s GUI Builder and five UiApp widgets, CalDAV API, Google Building Maker, Google Cloud Connect, Google Voice App for BlackBerry, Search API for Shopping and Snapseed Desktop for Macintosh and Windows.